When scrutiny sceptics ask me, "Where are the good examples of scrutiny?" I point to our latest edition of Successful Scrutiny.

Packed with the winners and runners-up from the Centre for Public Scrutiny's annual Good Scrutiny Awards, this provides compelling evidence where scrutiny is really working in local authorities.

With entries now open for the 2013 awards, it seemed timely to revisit one of last year's winners – Gloucestershire county council – to ask what they felt others could learn from their experience.

Gloucestershire won the overall impact through scrutiny award forits Severn Estuary scrutiny commission, which changed the way the Environment Agency consults local communities about flood risk management.

The commssion was set up to influence the Environment Agency's proposals for flood risk management in the Severn Estuary, following local anger at initial proposals that proposed letting some flood defences lapse to compensate for the impact of rising sea levels on salt marshes. As one Severnside resident put it, it was the commission, not the Environment Agency's formal consultation that "provided the basis from which a focused and coordinated approach by stakeholders and the local communities [could] be developed".

Councillor Rob Garnham, who chairs Gloucestershire's overview and scrutiny management committee,emphasised how difficult it can be for those working in local scrutiny to get national organisations to recognise them as important stakeholders, even when those organisations have a clear impact on local communities. He argued that ensuring scrutiny is responding to issues of real public interest is vital to build scrutiny's mandate to influence.

Gloucestershire has developed a simple, one-page strategy to test any request for a new scrutiny review or task and finish group.

It asks the following questions:

• Is there public demand or need for the review, giving scrutiny a powerful mandate to demand change from policy-makers and service providers?

• Is there a genuine opportunity to influence policy and practice - ie, will recommendations have a chance of making a difference?

• Is there a clear focus for the review, recognising that going deep and narrow can have more impact than broad but shallow?

• Have we thought about the most effective format and approach to the review, ensuring it is tailored to the particular subject?

If other authorities only carried out scrutiny reviews that met these principles, there might be less scrutiny but it would probably be better scrutiny.

Less but better scrutiny would also enable authorities to defend continuing to resource scrutiny in a time of highly challenging resources. This kind of focused, demand-led, influential, well organised scrutiny would be more likely to win an award and, more importantly, would be more likely to have a beneficial impact on local communities.

Jessica Crowe is executive director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny. Deadline for entries to the 2013 Good Scrutiny awards is 31 March.

• Want your say? Email us at public.leaders@guardian.co.uk.

Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network now to get our weekly email updates on policy, leadership and senior public sector jobs.

• For the latest on public services leadership, follow us: @publicleaders